Yet another SONY rootkit?
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/03/2250249&from=rss
Rick Rubin Discloses Sony Rootkit Called Home
Posted by kdawson on Monday September 03, @07:48PM from the curiouser-and-curiouser dept. Privacy
caffeinemessiah writes "Rick Rubin, the legendary music producer, recently signed on as co-head of Columbia Records, which is owned by Sony BMG. In a recent New York Times interview (on pg. 4 of the online version), he discloses, possibly accidentally: 'It was the highest debut of Neil [Diamond]'s career, off to a great start. But Columbia — it was some kind of corporate thing — had put spyware on the CD. That kept people from copying it, but it also somehow recorded information about whoever bought the record...' Seems like the rootkit might have been a little more than your vanilla invade-your-rights-DRM scheme."
All the data spills that didn't make it into Clippings
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20070903074128559
Data “Dysprotection:” breaches reported last week
Monday, September 03 2007 @ 07:50 AM CDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches
A recap of incidents or privacy breaches reported last week for those who enjoy shaking their head and muttering to themselves with their morning coffee.
Source - Chronicles of Dissent
Why should anyone pay for something your Privacy Policy (and enlightened self-interest) guarantees?
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20070903075042243
The Privacy Market Has Many Sellers, but Few Buyers
Monday, September 03 2007 @ 07:50 AM CDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Other Privacy News
Privacy is fast becoming the trendy concept in online marketing. An increasing number of companies are flaunting the steps they've taken to protect the privacy of their customers. But studies suggest consumers won't pay even 25 cents to protect their data.
In one week in July, Ask.com unveiled AskEraser, a tool that will allow users to obliterate their search histories; Microsoft announced enhanced privacy controls for its Windows Live service; and Google and Yahoo shrank the amount of time they retained IP addresses and search logs, reducing the ability of government agencies to subpoena such data.
Source - Wired News
Interesting that this comes from the Financial Times...
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9dba9ba2-5a3b-11dc-9bcd-0000779fd2ac.html
Chinese military hacked into Pentagon
By Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington and Richard McGregor in Beijing Published: September 3 2007 19:00 | Last updated: September 3 2007 20:53
The Chinese military hacked into a Pentagon computer network in June in the most successful cyber attack on the US defence department, say American officials.
The Pentagon acknowledged shutting down part of a computer system serving the office of Robert Gates, defence secretary, but declined to say who it believed was behind the attack.
Current and former officials have told the Financial Times an internal investigation has revealed that the incursion came from the People’s Liberation Army.
One senior US official said the Pentagon had pinpointed the exact origins of the attack. Another person familiar with the event said there was a “very high level of confidence...trending towards total certainty” that the PLA was responsible. The defence ministry in Beijing declined to comment on Monday.
... The PLA regularly probes US military networks – and the Pentagon is widely assumed to scan Chinese networks – but US officials said the penetration in June raised concerns to a new level because of fears that China had shown it could disrupt systems at critical times.
Ditto (Well, not exactly, but you get my drift?)
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=132902&f_src=lightreading_gnews
Analyst: Chinese Face Spy Scandal Fallout
SEPTEMBER 03, 2007
A report suggesting that the Chinese military has hacked into German government computers could have a negative impact on the prospects in Western markets of Chinese equipment vendors Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and ZTE Corp. (Shenzhen: 000063 - message board; Hong Kong: 0763), believes an analyst at Dresdner Kleinwort .
German news magazine Der Spiegel reported recently that computers in the German chancellery and the foreign, economic, and research ministries had been infected with Chinese spyware software, and German officials say they believe the hackers were linked to China's People's Liberation Army.
A thank you to Groklaw... Is this a potential business model or simply a case that bothered the geeks?
http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/59131.html
Groklaw: The Industry's Eyes in Court
By Frank Hayes Computerworld 09/03/07 4:00 AM PT
It's Groklaw that has published every scrap of legal and technical information available on the cases -- every brief, deposition and ruling, along with press releases, technical documentation and historical information. It's Groklaw's loose network of volunteers that has haunted the Utah courthouse, collecting paperwork, reporting on hearings and transcribing everything in sight.
Free is not always free... Does address the 'cost of storage' issue.
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/03/1513226&from=rss
School Kids Get Virtual Web Lockers
Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday September 03, @02:33PM from the my-worm-ate-my-homework dept. Education IT
Lucas123 writes "Seventh and eighth graders in Tulsa, Oklahoma not only get tablet PCs at the beginning of the school year, but they are now issued 100MB of storage through a hosted school 'Web Locker' system. The Web lockers also include chat, calendaring, and collaboration capabilities, but school administrators can also monitor and track all files uploaded to the system, and lock out individuals for misuse."
[From the article: The system also includes password access that students must share with their parents, she said. Don't bet on it. Bob]
Perhaps a source of truly unique ring tones? “I am not a crook... I am not a crook...”
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/015865.html
September 03, 2007
Nixon Tapes and Transcripts Now Available Online
"Between 1971 and 1973, President Richard Nixon secretly recorded 3,700 hours of his phone calls and meetings. These recordings were made in the Oval Office (commonly designated by the abbreviation "OVAL"), his hideaway office in the Executive Office Building ("EOB"), the Cabinet Room ("CAB"), Camp David ("CDHW"), and on various White House telephones ("WHT"). Currently, approximately 2,100 hours of these tapes have been declassified, released, and are available to the public. However, neither the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) nor the Nixon Presidential Library has made official transcriptions. Instead, they have left this monumental task--a task that NARA once estimated took 100 hours of staff time to transcribe 1 hour of tape--to researchers. The purpose of this website is to make these transcripts available, side-by-side multiple audio formats, to members of the public who are not able to travel to the National Archives and Records Administration's (NARA) Archives II facility in College Park, Maryland, or to the Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, California, to listen to and transcribe the conversations for themselves."
Using much the same logic, wouldn't this be a basis for requiring defendants to turn on and keep all security/access logs?
Judge Affirms Magistrate’s Decision in the RAM Memory Case; No Minimum Storage Time for Electronic Information Before it is Discoverable
The June 20, 2007, blog reported on the Magistrate’s decision in Los Angeles District Court that held, for the first time, that the contents of a computer’s Random Access Memory (”RAM”) memory are discoverable. (The Magistrate’s Order is Columbia Pictures Industries v. Bunnell, Case No. CV 06-1093 (FMC(JCx) (Doc. No. 176)). The Magistrate’s discovery ruling was appealed to the District Court Judge, Florence-Marie Cooper. Multiple amici appeared and advanced “weapon of mass discovery” type arguments, urging the court not to interpret “electronically stored information” (”ESI”) under the rules to include RAM. The amici wanted the court to exclude RAM from discovery for several reasons, but primarily because of its “ephemeral nature.” The key issue here is the meaning of “stored.” As my earlier blog pointed out, information can sometimes be stored in RAM for less than one-billionth of a second. The arguments were all rejected, and Judge Cooper’s upheld the Magistrate’s earlier Order. I put up a full copy of the final order here: Order Denying Defendants’ Motion For Review dated Aug. 24, 2007, Columbia Pictures Industries v. Bunnell, Case No. CV 06-1093 (FMC(JCx)) (Doc. No. 254).
... Recall that the effective date of the injunction was postponed until this district court review of the Magistrate’s order. The injunction requires that all user activities recorded in the webserver log be transferred from RAM and produced to plaintiffs. Just after the district court order was entered, but before the injunction could go into effect, the defendants excluded all users from the web whose computers are identified as located in the United States.
Intriguing! This is a way to have the “experts” put their money where their mouths are... Any statement along the lines of “our security is unbreakable” should be backed up by their willingness to guarantee a cash prize to anyone who cracks it!
http://techdirt.com/articles/20070830/074450.shtml
Prize Insurance Puts A Price On Conventional Wisdom
from the what-a-deal dept
Since the first X-Prize competition, we've seen more and more interest in this model as a way to spur innovation. However, there are still a lot of questions about the competition model, in terms of efficacy and utility for private industry. While businesses are interested in the concept, the exact model remains unclear. Economist Alex Tarbarrok relates an interesting point about how the X-Prize was funded. Apparently, the group behind it didn't actually raise the prize money, but rather it bought an insurance contract that would pay off in the event that someone actually won. And who wrote the insurance contract? None other than the established experts in the field: Boeing and McDonnell-Douglas. It just so happened that these companies thought the prospect of a successful launch was basically nil, so they gave the organization a very generous price on this insurance contract. The fact that the prize was ultimately claimed is a good indication that even the established leaders in a field don't always have the best grasp of what advances are just around the corner. It also suggests a possible business model, whereby middlemen attempt to arbitrage the disparity between what the establishment deems possible and what individual inventors think they can accomplish.
Research?
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/015866.html
September 03, 2007
Federation of American Scientists Posts 60 Year Archive of Public Interest Reports
"The Federation of American Scientists posts its unique 60 year archive of public interest reports on science in the public interest, nuclear weapons and energy policy, biological and chemical warfare, government secrecy, military policy...Reports online range from 1946 to 2005. A year-by-year pull down menu is available here." [Michael Ravnitzky, Steven Aftergood]
Need for more 'real world' projects?
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2178319,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594
Programming Grads Meet a Skills Gap in the Real World
September 3, 2007 By Darryl K. Taft
Despite the best laid plans of colleges and universities, there remains a skills gap between what computer science graduates learn in their undergraduate years and what they need to become proficient in a typical at-work environment.
In short, many people on both sides of the equation—teachers as well as potential employers—say the educational system is not doing enough to keep pace with the ever-changing needs of IT, and that entering the work force often is as much of an educational experience as is college, [true for most professions, I suspect. Bob] particularly for programmers.
... "I found that UC Berkeley had an excellent curriculum but not only was my schooling lagging behind work, it became very hard to even go to school because work had me learning the concepts and their applicability and nuances that teachers didn't even seem to know."
... Some of the things the school didn't teach Zilka and many who are now entering the work force include issues around communication, development skills, and business and product design.
On the communication front, Zilka said, "Presentation skills are critical, and selling and influencing peers is critical."
One example of a hot new area – perhaps the next Big Thing for IT? (By the way, this will drive the e-Discovery folks nuts!)
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2178303,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594
Virtual Iron Preps Latest Virtualization Release
By Scott Ferguson September 4, 2007
Virtual Iron angles for a spot as the low-cost, open-source alternative to VMware.
Virtual Iron, which has been working to position itself as the low-cost, open-source alternative to VMware, is releasing the fourth version of its namesake virtualization suite.
The Lowell, Mass., company will release Virtual Iron Version 4 on Sept. 10, just before the start of the VMworld conference in San Francisco, executives announced Sept. 4.
The new release of Virtual Iron's signature enterprise product, according to Chief Marketing Officer Michael Grandinetti, not only gives the company a product that can compete again the likes of VMware's Virtual Infrastructure suite, but it will directly challenge the latest release from XenSource.
... Virtual Iron is offering three versions of its new software: a free version that supports up to 12 virtual machines on one physical machine, the Enterprise Edition, which costs $499 per socket, and an Extended Enterprise Version, which includes all the features for $799 per socket.
Dilbert on “Interns”
http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/archive/images/dilbert2040738070904.gif
No comments:
Post a Comment